Don Sloane has worked in the recovery field for thirty-three years and is honored to be part of the recovery community. He will discuss The Basics of Addiction and Access to Quality and Ethical Care and will touch on the mechanics of addiction and how it impacts the individual, their family and society.

After his own treatment, Don began working with The Caron Treatment Centers marketing group, educating employee assistance professionals and human resource professionals about effective responses to addiction. Don also trained as an interventionist with Dr. Joseph Cruz who worked closely with Betty Ford. He has held a variety of positions throughout his career, including opening a neighborhood restaurant. Through it all, Don never stopped facilitating interventions. Today, his company specializes in compassionate interventions, comprehensive monitoring for professionals, recovery care management, assessment, random screening, sober companion, sober escort, and individual and couples counseling.

He has a Master of Science degree in organizational development from The American University and National Training Laboratories (NLT), is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach and is certified to administer the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and The Profiler.

Sarah Bamford Seidelmann was a board certified physician specializing in surgical pathology living a nature-starved, hectic lifestyle—until a walrus entered her life and changed everything. In her presentation, My Unexpected Pilgrimage from Physician to Healer: Walruses, Bears and Black Mambas, Oh My!she will discuss how each of us possesses the keys to re-envisioning and restoring our broken health care system. She believes that by each of us saying yes to our own hero’s journey, we can create vibrant health in our communities.

Sarah says she is not a pie-in-the-sky person. She is a realist with four real kids, a real husband, two real dogs, and a “real life”: it’s just that her reality has shifted.

Sarah has trained at the Martha Beck Institute and Michael Hamer’s Foundation for Shamanic Studies. She is the author of Swimming with Elephants and a new book, The Book of Beasties: Your A-Z Guide to the Illuminating Wisdom of Spirit Animals.

Nothing is more powerful than leading by example, and Jay Pryor is a living example of the power of possibility in transforming your life. In his presentation, Woman in Man Skin—Transgender: Training Beyond Tolerance, Jay shares their journey of transitioning from female to male on the job in the nineties, the drastic difference in how they were treated as a man, and the current world as a gender-nonconforming person in business. Jay will give you an understanding of the neuroscience of unconscious bias and how it functions in the brain. They will also cover the understanding of transgender and gender-nonconforming vocabulary and appropriate usage, as well as actionable steps to create a gender conscious workplace.

Jay presents with heart, humor and wit so audiences are left more aware, educated and inspired. They are a speaker, executive coach and facilitator of corporate trainings and workshops around the world. They also serve as co-host of Doing the Work with Jay and Becca, a weekly podcast devoted to awakening people to their own power to transform their lives. Jay is the author of the acclaimed book, Lean Inside: 7 Steps to Personal Power: A Practical Guide to Transformation for Women. Jay lives with their wife Jessica and their two children in Lawrence, Kansas.

While Minnesota consistently ranks as one of the healthiest states in the nation overall, not all Minnesotans share that experience. In her presentation, The State of Health In Minnesota, Janelle Waldock will share Blue Cross’s compelling and urgent case for building equity into its policies and workplaces, and how doing so can benefit people and businesses alike.

Janelle has played a prominent role in Blue Cross’s policy and advocacy effort, including leading the coalition that supported the passage of Minnesota’s Freedom to Breathe law. She has also been responsible for a number of successful initiatives to increase healthy eating and active living across the state.

She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in speech communication and organizational psychology. She has a Master of Science degree in experimental education from Mankato State University and a Master of Arts degree in management and public administration from Hamline University.

Gray Miller founded Titanium Health Care after the near death of his father due to a combination of health care failings. His observations led to a blueprint for a better way to manage the care of high risk patients. Today, Titanium Health Care operates high risk patient clinics and programs designed to care for patients and reduce unnecessary admissions and readmissions to the hospital. In his session, Readmissions Reduction Through High Risk Clinics, he will share how Titanium Healthcare has achieved significant results in the Los Angeles market, the impact it has has on costs and how the Titanium system works.

Prior to creating Titanium Healthcare, Gray led Intercede Health, a self-funded hospitalist company in Houston, Texas. He was a general Manager of a health care start-up called Geriatric Care Services (a division of Long Term Care Group, Inc.) which created custom care programs designed to help United Mine Workers of America members stay in their homes and reduce costs. Gray was senior vice president, business operations for long term care insurance at General Electric (GE) where he led a dramatic turnaround of operational functions. In his various positions with GE, Gray has led large teams of colleagues across the country and around the world.

Among his many accomplishments, Gray is a graduate of the U.S. Navy’s Nuclear Engineering Program, has a Bachelor of Science degree in finance from the University of Maryland, and is a certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt and Quality Leader.

In his session A Fresh Perspective, Caspar Szulc will be sharing a personal tale with us about how a truly unique upbringing, belief system and outlook on the medical field can have an incredible impact on the health and wellness of countless individuals—and society as a whole. According to Caspar, fixing our broken medical system doesn’t require more money, more research, more man-power, or more resources—we need a fresh perspective. During his presentation he will tap into his personal recollection of growing up fully ingrained in the medical field and exposed to countless different therapeutic modalities.

Innovative Medicine, the company Caspar co-founded, has been dreaming big for over twelve years, making a positive change and going against the conventional thinking that has so far provided few answers to the growing health crisis. The mission of Innovative Medicine is to go beyond the mainstream approach to incremental change and take a vertical leap toward exponential progress by leading the way in unifying and personalizing the field of medicine.

Denise Tahara, PhD, tells us that context matters. In her thinking, to improve health and well-being, we must first understand both the provider system and patient ecosystem. Too often we study the patient experience within a specific practice, unit or organization, without considering the entire journey across provider systems and networks. In her session, Using Systems Thinking to Design for Health and Well-being, Denise will help us discover the pain points where the system does not support interactions, care delivery, and follow-up. She will help us define how we can enable and engage patients along their healing journey.

Denise teaches courses in systems thinking, leadership and decision making. She also works with organizations on performance improvement, integrative care, pediatric obesity and food insecurity. She helps organizations leverage existing resources to innovate and engage, create strategic partnerships with local community leaders, and invest in the long-term health of their neighborhoods. Denise received her Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University. She received her Master of Business Administration, Master of Philosophy degree and postgraduate doctoral degree from New York University. Denise holds a public accountant certification from New York State, as well.

For almost 20 years, Kirat Kharode has been at the forefront of delivering innovative growth and cost containment strategies to urban health care providers in extremely challenging markets across the country. He is a seasoned health care operations and strategy executive with a strong track record of revenue proliferation. Most recently, Mr. Kharode has led the development of ambulatory networks and population health strategies for hospitals, health systems, and medical groups in the northeastern United States. Prior to that he held a number of leadership positions at Tenet Healthcare Corporation, a health care services company with $11 billion in annual revenue. Mr. Kharode has received numerous awards from national, state, and local trade organizations for his tireless efforts to create patient-centered medical villages for disadvantaged populations.

Mr. Kharode earned bachelor’s degrees in Life Sciences and Health Policy Administration from Pennsylvania State University in University Park, PA. He received a master’s degree in Healthcare Management from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and has a Juris Doctor from Temple University’s Beasley School of Law in PA. He holds a Certificate in Lean Healthcare from the University Michigan College of Engineering. Mr. Kharode is a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives (FACHE) and has mentored a number of early careerists who are passionate about revolutionizing health care.

Successful organizations put their people first—and their people’s health. But relying on today’s health care system can make this commitment challenging, says Philip Kurtz.

In The Power to Be Well, Philip will share his views on how smart, scalable population health management really can empower employers to nurture healthier, happier outcomes for employees. His passion for wellness is on display at CareATC, where Philip leads a company that leverages evidence-based medicine within a fully integrated population health management ecosystem. He walks the talk by engaging colleagues in ways that promote fitness, nutrition and mental health.

He believes that better information leads to better outcomes. Before joining CareATC, he founded Benefit Informatics, a health care data analytics company with more than 7,000 employers and 5 million members on the platform. His previous start-up was CIS Technology, a company that developed software for hospital claims processing and revenue cycle management, where he served as President and CEO from 1985 to 2000. After taking the company public on NASDAQ, the company merged with National Data Corporation and is now part of Mckesson Corporation. Early in his career, Philip practiced public accounting as a CPA with an emphasis on developing business software in oil and gas taxation, construction and the medical industry.

Homer, Alaska is called the end of the road. It is an area where resources are limited and transportation and access create major barriers to health care. In her session, A Community Approach to Managing the Opioid Crisis in Rural Alaska, Stephanie Stillwell will discuss how Homer has joined forces to find local strategies to tackle its opioid epidemic. She will also discuss how she works to empower communities like Homer to create local solutions to this national epidemic.

Stephanie was born in Duluth, Minnesota. She graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing and started her career as a pediatric psychiatric nurse at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. She moved to Homer, Alaska in 2015, to pursue her passion for promoting wellness and community health in rural Alaska. While in Homer, she has worked as a public health nurse for the State of Alaska and the Ninilchik Traditional Council and currently serves as the community outreach director for GSquared, as the facilitator for the Southern Kenai Peninsula Opioid Task Force, and as co-coordinator of the local health and wellness coalition.